Page 69 of What Boys Learn

Most evenings, we had the television on, though Benjamin paid only half attention to the programs I liked. He’d get up from the couch often, as he always had—restless, scrounging for snacks or taking longer than expected in the bathroom, where he was probably watching his own videos or scrolling. That night, he was more restless than ever.

“Don’t pause it,” he said, getting up from the sitcom we were watching.

“I don’t mind.”

Usually I did mind, but things had changed. I couldn’t focus. My mind flitted back to Summit, back to Sidney or Izzy. While Benjamin was out of the room, I googled statistics. What kind of date rape drugs are most often used? How many women reported having drinks spiked sometime in their lives? Awareness was widespread, and even so, 8 percent of college women had reported being drugged, an article said. Almost 3 percent of college women reported drug-facilitated sexual assault.

I kept looking for stories that matched Sidney’s and Izzy’s, but what I came across the most were girls and women drugged at parties, in bars, at travel resorts—as well as articles telling what women should do to keep a better eye on their drinks.Right. Leave it to the victims.

It wasn’t really just about drinks, other articles agreed, or about the wide availability of drugs, either. It was about consent.

Izzy had been the one to remind me what a recent concept that was. The subject ofSNLjokes in the 1990s. A commonplace topic by the time I was in college. And now? Maybe things were backsliding or even reversing, as things all too often seemed to do. Maybe men were just tired of asking. Tired of waiting. Maybe it was more of a turn-on to see women as they often appeared in bad porn—as the recipients, willing or not willing, of whatever a man decided to do to them. Maybe for a certain breed of man, inexperienced or confused or full of loathing, “not willing” was even better, as long as there was a way to ensure he’d have control of the situation.

Benjamin still hadn’t emerged from the bathroom. No sound of flushing or running water. I opened an incognito window and quickly typedmurder date rape drugs.

I flinched at the first search result. According to a UK headline, an east London man named Stephen Port had murdered four men he’d drugged.Obsessed with date rape drug pornography, the article read.

At least one of the victims’ deaths was ruled a suicide—no investigation conducted—because the police simply assumed. Dead body. Drugs in his system. A suicide note nearby. But the note hadn’t been written by the victim. It was written by the killer. The killer’s landlord was the one to read about multiple murders and notice the connection. Still, the police ignored the landlord. Port was given free rein to continue doing what he wanted to do.

Why, I wanted to know. But I couldn’t find any quick insights into Port’s psychology. The search results were overloaded with articles about the police’s baffling mishandling of the case.

While walking her border collie, a woman found one of the bodies in a churchyard. She called the police. Several weeks later, she found a second body in the same spot. She called the police again.I am the same woman that found the other body a few weeks ago . . . and I have found another young boy.

And still, even with bodies dead from the same apparent cause, in the same location, the police didn’t interpret the deaths as murders—and certainly not connected murders. With idiocy like that, it was easy to imagine why serial killers remained uncaught.

As soon as the thought struck, I regretted it.Uncaught. That was terrifying.Serial killers. That was worse. A predatory killer who murders again and again—the stuff of horror movies and sensationalist tabloids and TV shows. It seemed so . . . 1970s. As outdated as an avocado-colored refrigerator or a macramé wall hanging.

But Port had killed his victims in 2014 and 2015. He wasn’t one of those California sadists picking up stray bell-bottom-wearing hitchhikers. He was someone of my generation, using a dating app to find his victims. He didn’t need to drug or deceive them into following him home. They expected sex, most likely. But that wasn’t enough for him. He was in pursuit of a particular experience.

Port’s description of one of his victims:like a rag doll.

Part of me wanted to pretend I couldn’t imagine such a man—never mind the person who’d killed Izzy or Sidney. But of course I could. It didn’t take a psychology degree. I’d known my share of aggressive, empathy-deficient men with fragile egos and short fuses. I had no trouble imagining them as serial domestic abusers. But take that self-entitlement and penchant for abuse, then add a warped sexual fantasy . . .

I heard footsteps and rapidly closed the window on my phone. Benjamin chuckled at the scowl still visible, evidently, on my face. “Irritating text from your ex-boyfriend?”

“Just . . . news,” I said, trying to banish the images in my head. “Politics.”

Benjamin looked around without sitting. He gestured at the paused sitcom.

“I don’t really want to watch anymore.”

“You sure?”

He picked up his socks from the floor.

“Thanks,” I said.

He was doing that more often lately. Picking up his socks. Flossing his teeth.

The hair trim Curtis had suggested for Benjamin last week—that was something a detective or judge might notice. But not the socks. Not the used floss in the garbage can. And certainly not the made bed, sheets tucked in and pillow centered with perfection. Wasn’t there some Navy SEAL who gave a commencement address about that?

A mother couldn’t complain. Only wonder.

“I’m turning in,” Benjamin said, though it was only nine o’clock.

“Okay. Good night.”

I’d given up on the Netflix program and gone into the kitchen, hoping we still had some ice cream left, when my phone rang. Robert.